Uncommon Sense

Yoani Sanchez's call to action

A partial translation of an amazing challenge from Yoani Sanchez for all of us who blog about Cuba, via Yuca Baby:

I would like, with this message, which I send like a letter in a bottle thrown at sea for all the bloggers of the world, to say that yes, we exist, we need your help, we need technological knowledge, bibliographies, ideas for how to overcome censorship, and above all, support and solidarity. So that we don't feel as if we are alone, so that we may leap over that hoop, that wall of control that moves around us. To open some cracks {in that wall}, and, someday, perhaps one that is not so far away, dynamite it.

Political prisoner Argüelles on hunger strike

Cuban political prisoner Pedro Argüelles Moran, an independent journalist imprisoned since 2003, started a hunger strike Dec. 9 after officials at the Canaleta prison in Ciego de Ávila interfered with a conjugal visit with his wife.

Argüelles had repeatedly asked officials to explain delays in the visit. Ultimately, he refused to see his wife after the delay.

Argüelles, who was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003, is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

On Human Rights Day, Damas march with 'no problems'

About 30 members of the Damas de Blanco marched through Havana on Wednesday, to commemorate International Human Rights Day. The Damas, one of the pillars of the Cuban opposition, are beyond reproach, so the Castro dictatorship, which had threatened other dissidents planning to mark Human Rights Day, left them alone.

"There were no problems," said Laura Pollán.

Meanwhile, a march planned by dissident Dr. Darsi Ferrer — the subject of preemptive repression by the Cuban secret police — was called off because of a lack of participants.

Human rights have a long way to go in Cuba

Today is International Human Rights Day, which in Cuba is just another day for the dictatorship's thugs to beat on Cubans struggling for freedom.

Penultimos Dias has a multi-media look at how far Cubans have to go before they fully enjoy all the rights celebrated today.

OAS intervenes on behalf of Cuban political prisoner

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of Human Rights, will intervene with the Castro dictatorship on behalf of political prisoner Yordis García Fournier.

García, a youth political activist, in September was sentenced to 1 year in prison for "public disorder" after he and another activist, Izael Poveda Silva visited a compatriot of theirs in jail.

García is currently being held in an isolation cell at the Combinado de Guantánamo prison. From Oct. 11 to Nov. 1, García was on a hunger strike to demand the right to wear ia civilian clothes and not an inmate's uniform. And since Nov. 20, according to his brother, family members have not been able to visit him.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked in a letter that the Cuban dictatorsho "take the necessary measures to guarantee the life and physical integrity of Yordis García Fournier and provide adequate medical treatment in light of the standards international governing treatment of prisoners."

Human Rights Day is nothing to celebrate in Cuba

Today is International Human Rights Day.

Unfortunately for the Cuban people, the Castro dictatorship — as evidenced here, here and here — is not taking a holiday from its schedule of oppression and repression.

But unfortunately for the Castro dictatorship, it cannot skip today on the calendar. And no amount of thuggery against the Cuban people can forever forestall the day it eventually is tossed into the ash bin of history.

The more people who today remember the message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and advocate for its application on the island of Cuba, the sooner the day of the dictatorship's demise will come.

The Christian Science Monitor has more.

Cuban dissidents arrested just in time for Human Rights Day

More than 20 Cuban dissidents — including the journalist Guillermo Fariñas and former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez) — were arrested this week, apparently to prevent them from participating in events marking International Human Rights Day, according to Cuba Encuentro.

"The police operation is continuing," said Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz, president of the non-official Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Nonetheless, Sánchez and other dissidents have vowed to go forth with planned events to commemorate today's 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As long as the Castro dictatorship is in power, however, rights outlined in the declaration are far less than universal.

Please remember in your thoughts and prayers today those Cubans struggling to change that for their nation.

Cuban Democratic Directorate has the names of other dissidents who have been detained.

Dictatorship warns Darsi Ferrer

Wednesday is International Human Rights Day, and once again, the Castro dictatorship, after kidnapping him off the street and taking him to a local police station, has put prominent dissident Dr. Darsi Ferrer on notice that he should stay at home.

Ferrer says he will do as he has planned — he will hit the streets in silent protest of the human rights situation in Cuba — but everyone should take the threats seriously. Just look at what happened last year.

The Real Cuba has more.

Cuban bloggers meet

Despite the best efforts of the dictatorship to stop them, Cubans ready to take the struggle for liberty to the blogosphere gathered over the weekend in Piñar del Rio.

Via Yoani Sanchez:

Between December 5 and 6 the first exchanges of a knowledge workshop have begun to take place between people who maintain Internet blogs from the Island and others interested in exploring this medium.

Conceived from its beginnings as a journey of study with several stages, the encounter was deprived of its inaugural session because agents from the Interior Ministry cited and officially announced to some participants that they would be prohibited from attending the inauguration in the city of Pinar del Río. It is not possible to provide documented evidence of this prohibition because said agents refused to confirm it in writing.

But freedom discovers roads that suppression cannot find. That’s why the workshop participants, faithful to their choice of dialog and the search for viable alternatives, turned to other methods to begin the journey, without having to physically travel from one territory to another.

There have been several initial topics: General notes about a blog, conducted by Yoani Sánchez, which addresses technical questions related to the software appropriate for a blog; The writing of a blog, proposed by Reinaldo Escobar, with a debate on the application of journalistic norms in drafting the new language of cyberspace; and finally, The Ethical Blogger, where Eugenio Leal introduces concepts relative to ethical conduct in this novel way of transmitting ideas and information. The texts of these discussions and others will be posted on a website.

The exchange of experiences took place in an informal atmosphere of respect for different opinions and purposeful debate. Promoting this experience were the collaborators from the digital magazine Convivencia [http://www.convivenciacuba.es/] and from the Desde Cuba portal [http://desdecuba.com], among others.

These first steps constitute an authentic management of knowledge. Among the suggested initiatives is a call for participants in a competition for Cuban blogs, to be launched in 2009. These new variants to the plan of study about Cuban blogs remain open to all interested parties.

Freedom in Cuba just became that much more of an inevitability.

Notes from the gulag, 12/8/08

The Castro gulag, from Piñar del Rio in the west to Holguín in the east of Cuba, is a gateway to hell.

Here are a few examples why:

• Acting at the behest of prison officials, common prisoners at the Las Tunas provincial prison recently have used wooden sticks and knives to threaten political prisoners Alfredo Domínguez Batista and José Daniel Ferrer García

• Political prisoner Mario Alberto Pérez Aguilera, too, warns that his life is in danger.

• Political prisoner Diagzán Saavedra Prat has been on hunger strike since Nov. 18, demanding that authorities at the Cuba Sí prison in Holguín restore his access to a prison telephone./li>